It seemed to Ulysses that the anarchist got a kick out of watching others suffer, particularly savouring the anguish of those forced to observe the destruction he wrought. It was as if he fed off their guilt and sorrow. That was his raison d’etre, what gave him his thrill.
“I should come with you,” the Inspector said, picking his way across the dust-covered rubble of the Opera House.
“No,” Ulysses answered firmly. He could hear the rage in the inspector’s voice. He had a suspicion he knew what Dupin would do if he caught up with Le Papillon. It was what Ulysses would probably do, but Ulysses was a free agent with the ultimate alibi – he was in London while this debacle was going on, or at least a younger version of him was – whereas Auguste Dupin was a respected member of the Parisian police force who needed to keep his nose clean, a representative of the law who needed to be seen to uphold justice rather than indulge in vengeance.
Dupin was the kind of hero Paris deserved at the moment, a white knight who, in the aftermath of this unfolding disaster, would help put things right again. But Ulysses Quicksilver was the kind of hero it needed right now, one who was prepared to do whatever it took to stop the madman who had unleashed hell on the City of Lovers, transforming it into a City of Nightmares. While Dupin needed to keep his hands clean, whether he knew it yet or not, Ulysses could get his as dirty as he liked.
“Stay here!” he shouted back over his shoulder. “Do what you’re best at.”
“And what’s that?”
“Helping people.”
“And what are you going to do?” the inspector asked Ulysses’ back as he scrambled clear of the sinkhole into the devastated Rue Auber.
“What needs to be done.”
“Wait!”
Ulysses stopped and turned at that.
“Take this,” he said, tossing the dandy a pistol.
Ulysses snatched it out of the air.
“And I supposed you’d better take these as well, in case.” A pair of handcuffs followed.
“Thank you, inspector,” Ulysses said, giving a slight bow. “I didn’t know you cared.”
“Never mind that now. Isn’t there somewhere else you need to be?”
ULYSSES SET OFF at a run, senses alert to everything going on around him, reasoning that the best way to avoid the apocalyptic effects of the earthquake was to keep on the move. But which way should he to go?
Even as he ran – ears straining for the tell-tale sounds of a building’s foundations giving way or window panes cracking as a house’s façade crumbled, his one eye scanning the street ahead of him, on the lookout for toppling telegraph poles, streetlamps and out-of-control steam-wagons – a part of his mind considered where the epicentre of the earthquake might be and thereby how best he might reach that particular location.
They had been warned of the impending round of secondary tremors, or aftershocks – or whatever they had been – by the wholesale destruction of entire streets to the south. Ulysses reasoned that, considering his current location, the focus of the seismic assault was on the other side of the river, the Musée d’Orsay side.
It hadn’t taken long, from the first warning signs that something was wrong to the secondary quake hitting the Place de la Bastille. So it couldn’t be too far away either. He was no expert, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of miles at most.
A lamppost toppled to the ground, throwing sparks and broken glass into the street in front of Ulysses as he fought to stay on his feet.
Somewhere, someone screamed.
The trouble was, Paris was a big place. To cover it on foot and find the source of the seismic pulses was a nigh on impossible task, but then what other option did he have?
Ulysses did a double-take, looking more closely at the toppling buildings around him as he ran on. It took him a moment to realise that these streets were looking more and more familiar – although it took him a moment longer to recognise where he was.
He had always had a strong sense of direction. Even though he had travelled to the Opera underground (via the labyrinth of sewer tunnels that wound beneath the city) and that conversely he had taken in much of the layout of this part of the city from above (whilst riding on the back of a flying steam-velocipede), he had nonetheless worked out where he was. He was approaching the spot where he and Cadence had chased the gorilla to a dead-end, and where they had come to ground in their pursuit of the cyber-ape, after turning the tables on the beast inside the belfry of Notre Dame cathedral.
Glancing down an alleyway, reliving the memory of their aerial pursuit of the brute above the rooftops of the city, cold shock suddenly gripped him and he skidded to a halt, as a loosened casement window crashed onto the fractured pavement behind him.
It was the cul-de-sac where Cadence had parked the steam-velocipede. Ulysses peered through the drifting clouds of dust and trailing smoke. And then he saw it.
Incredibly, the bike was still there: surrounded by broken bricks and shattered roof tiles, admittedly, but it was still in one piece. And that bike was the solution to the challenge now facing him.
He was all too aware of the shaking gutters and shingle-clatter of roof tiles shaking loose above him as he sprinted along the alleyway. He leapt broken beams, piles of bricks, his eye always on Cadence Bettencourt’s run-around, knowing full well that one collapsing tenement could rob him of his means of escape and pursuit, not to mention his life!
“Who’s a pretty boy then?” came a synthesised squawk. Still sitting in its pannier at the back of the bike, its head rotating in apparent simulated agitation, was Lumière’s parrot.
“Nice to see you too,” Ulysses said.
Grabbing hold of the handlebars, he swung himself into the driver’s seat, taking a moment to study the controls. He had only ever ridden the velocipede as a passenger but everything seemed quite straightforward. After all, there weren’t many things he hadn’t driven or piloted at one point or another in his life, either in his role as an agent of the crown of Magna Britannia or simply for pleasure, having the role of dandy and hedonistic thrill-seeking playboy off to a tee.
Activating the ignition, Ulysses was relieved to hear the engine fire first time. Revving the throttle, he kicked the stand-rest up and, muscles tensing against the weight of the machine, turned it in a tight circle to face the open end of the alleyway. He revved the throttle again and released the clutch.
Engine roaring, tyres screeching, the steam-velocipede took off.
“Rawk! Here we go again!” Archimedes squawked behind him.
Feet safely off the ground and on the bike’s footrests, Ulysses jinked the machine between the piles of rubble and over piles of fallen debris, regularly glancing at the speedometer. The bike wobbled and shook beneath him and it took all Ulysses’ concentration not to lose control of the steam-powered contraption.
Slowly the needle crept tantalizingly ever closer to the desired forty-four miles an hour. Ahead of him loomed the end of the alleyway and the crumbling façade of the buildings beyond. There wasn’t much of a runway left before he’d run out of room and time altogether.
Ulysses glanced from the speedo to the red button at the end of the throttle under his right hand. He hadn’t noticed it when he had been on the bike before, since Cadence’s gloved hand had kept it hidden from view. What did it do? It had to have a purpose, and Ulysses guessed, since it was attached to the throttle, it would have something to do with maintaining the bike’s acceleration. But he was no engineer; there was only one way to find out.
With crashing roar, like an avalanche of glass and brick, the architecture at the entrance to the alleyway finally gave in to the endless seismic shocks. The walls buckled, and the upper storeys of the crumbling tenements toppled slowly into the street.
Pulling back on the throttle again, Ulysses depressed the button.
With a throaty scream, the velocipede rocketed forwards, a jet of flame erupting from its twin exhausts, Ulysses bracing himself as the bike leapt into the ai
r.
The toppling tenements loomed large above him as he pulled back on the controls, the engine roaring, booster jets screaming, and Ulysses wondering if perhaps it wasn’t just too little, too late.
“Take cover!” the parrot screamed.
And then – like the Argo evading the Clashing Rocks of Cyanea – they were through, the two buildings coming down together in a deafening crash of bricks and crumbling mortar.
“Lucky bastard!”
Ulysses looked back over his shoulder at the robo-bird and gave a look which started as a scowl but turned into a grin as he regarded the flapping droid.
“Indeed,” he said, smiling from ear to ear.
Bringing the bike around over what was left of the Gallion district, Ulysses cast his gaze over the destruction that was still being wrought by the earthquake right across the city. Buildings lay toppled everywhere he looked, spreading out from a central point, in every direction throughout central Paris.
He climbed higher.
Reading the pattern created by the fallen buildings, Ulysses steered Cadence’s contraption south-west.
There ahead of him, the tallest and most instantly recognisable landmark in the whole of Paris rose above the devastation.
“Of course,” Ulysses hissed under his breath, and turned the bike towards the looming iron spire of the Eiffel Tower.
CHAPTER FOUR
Tower of Destruction
ULYSSES FELT AS though he could see the waves of sonic energy emanating from the interlaced girders of the Eiffel Tower, the resonating harmonics being created within the superstructure of the landmark distorting the air around it. Or was it just the heat-haze from the late spring sun?
Whatever the cause, there was no doubt now in Ulysses’ mind that the tower was the epicentre of the earthquake. Le Papillon had clearly done something to turn the edifice into a sonic pulse transmitter – just as he had turned the pipe organ beneath the Opera Garnier into a sonic bomb. And doubtless his gullible, and already dead, accomplices had had a part to play.
How had such a thing been achieved? And could it be undone?
Actually, Ulysses reflected, it probably could. He had conquered giant robots and time-warping devices that punched holes in the very fabric of the space-time continuum, so surely he could find a way to de-weaponise the Eiffel Tower – even if it meant blowing it sky high.
The velocipede passed over the Jardin des Tuileries – the once glorious public gardens now looking like they were in the initial earth-moving phase of an ambitious landscaping project. From there he crossed the Seine, every bridge spanning the river as far as the eye could see reduced to broken spans and fractured pilings.
His target was only a mile away now. Where precisely on the tower was Le Papillon’s diabolical device? And was his nemesis, Valerius Leroux, really there too?
Above the tower Ulysses saw a tethered hot air balloon. From this distance, it looked like a child’s party balloon.
That confirmed it. A hard smile spread across Ulysses’ lips. He was going to get the chance to get his hands dirty after all. Le Papillon was there, Ulysses was sure of it, waiting and watching as a city died. Enjoying the results of his handiwork.
He thought of Cadence. He thought of Josephine and Madame Marguerite, and wondered whether they had somehow miraculously survived the earthquake. If there was any justice in the world, then fate would have spared them. But then Ulysses knew from bitter personal experience that life was horribly unfair.
The velocipede soared ever closer to the tower. It was only half a mile away now.
He could see movement up on the top platform; people. One of them stood at a telescope. It was a man, someone he hadn’t encountered before. Another he did recognise, the tumble of auburn hair giving her away.
His heart leapt, but in the very next moment apprehension dug its claws in. If he could see them, they would most definitely already know of his approach, the noise of the purring steam engine giving him away if nothing else, even over the sounds of mass municipal destruction occurring at the foot of their ivory tower.
“WE’VE GOT COMPANY,” Moreau said, turning from the telescope he had had his eye to a moment before.
“Ah,” Le Papillon said, eyes narrowing behind the goggles of his mask as the whirring optics within zoomed in on the approaching aerial velocipede. “Now that I was not expecting.”
His jaw tensed. For one who sought to create chaos within the world, Le Papillon didn’t like it when his own plans went awry. It was Quicksilver, he was sure of it. It had to be.
“You know what they say,” came the girl’s voice from behind him. “No plan survives contact with the enemy.”
“Hmm... The enemy? Rather an unfortunate fly in the ointment.”
Le Papillon unholstered his pistol and heard the girl gasp. Had she really been so naïve as to believe that he would allow the British agent to approach unhindered? He was in no doubt as to what Quicksilver would do to him. The dandy was here to kill him, so the lepidopterist would just have to kill him first.
Without uttering another word, Le Papillon took aim and fired.
Cadence Bettencourt screamed.
ULYSSES HEARD THE dull crack of the pistol shot and before he could do anything to avoid it, the bullet spanged off the engine housing, ricocheting through one of the velocipede’s tail-fins.
“Merde!” Ulysses hissed under his breath. That had been too close. Clearly the direct approach wasn’t going to work.
Adjusting the angle of the wings with the bike’s foot-operated aileron controls, Ulysses steered the contraption into a downward glide.
There was another pistol crack and the sharp sound of another ricochet.
“Merde! Merde!” the parrot squawked. “Beware Leroux! You cannot trust Leroux!”
“You’re not wrong there,” Ulysses agreed, his body alive now with the adrenalin flooding his system.
He had to get out of the range of the gun.
He heard the metallic echo of one more shot as the velocipede passed into the shadows under the tower’s secondary platform. The splayed structure of the edifice itself was now shielding him from any more pot-shots the terrorist might try to take against him.
The engine began to splutter. Ulysses glanced over the side of the velocipede as he banked around a girder. The turbo boost had automatically cut out.
He was going to have to land. The second platform was now out of reach, but only a matter of twenty feet below him were the much broader promenades of the first tier. And thank God they were wider: flying Cadence’s steam-powered velocipede was one thing, landing it something else entirely.
What did they say about a good landing? Something about it being one you could walk away from?
To give himself enough runway to land on, he was going to have to bring the bike around outside the tower again, and no doubt back within range of Valerius Leroux’s pistol.
Bracing himself for the worst, Ulysses swung the spluttering bike around the south-west leg of the thrumming tower. But no shots came. He could only guess that Le Papillon had already given up hope of catching him that way, or that the butterfly-collector had something else planned, perhaps even making his getaway by balloon at that very moment.
And then the promenade of the first tier was before him again, the balustrade surrounding it only inches away from the bike.
His heart pounding, Ulysses held his breath and made a final adjustment. And then the back wheel of the bike made contact with the surface of the walkway.
There was a squeal of rubber, and moment later the front wheel made contact too. Ulysses slammed on the brakes.
He could feel the thrumming vibrations besetting the tower, and if there had ever been any doubt in his mind that the tower was the earthquake machine, they were gone now; the fillings rattled in the teeth.
The bike skidded, jerking from side to side, threatening to throw Ulysses off. The opposite edge of the platform was before him, an ominous one-hundred-and-eigh
ty-six-foot drop to the traumatised ground on the other side.
Fighting both the controls and the hurtling momentum of the bike, he steadily regained control. He killed the engine, keeping the pressure on the brakes. The screech of protesting tyres continued right up until the bike juddered to a halt, its front wheel touching the decorative ironwork of the balustrade.
“Lucky bastard!” Archimedes squawked again.
“Yeah, whatever,” Ulysses retorted, as he gladly dismounted from the bike.
He took the gun Inspector Dupin had given him from his pocket and checked its load. Every chamber contained a bullet. Smiling to himself, he ran for the lift.
Reaching the lift, Ulysses punched the call button.
Nothing happened.
He tried again.
Still nothing. No grinding of gears; nothing.
Ulysses shook his head in despair. Of course the lift wasn’t working. Le Papillon and his accomplice would have made sure of that, just as they had made sure there hadn’t been anybody around to bother them when they set about the business of turning the Eiffel Tower into an earthquake machine.
Craning his head back, he looked up to where the pylons converged hundreds of feet above him. There was no way round the problem; he was going to have to take the stairs, all eight hundred odd feet to the top.
Grabbing hold of the railing at the foot of the first flight, he hesitated, looking longingly at the abandoned velocipede. If only he had been able to approach the tower with greater stealth, perhaps even now he would be atop battling to rescue Cadence from the villainous Le Papillon, saving a damsel in distress from a dastardly villain once again, just the way he liked it.
But this was the real world and the steam-velocipede was too much of a liability. Cadence was alive, but now that Le Papillon knew Ulysses was on his way the dandy didn’t know how long that would remain the case.
Much as it galled him to admit it, her safety was secondary to that of the city. The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few. The butterfly had flapped its wings and a city was falling even now as a result. Leroux had to be stopped, regardless of the fate that might befall Cadence Bettencourt.
Time's Arrow 3: White Noise (Pax Britannia (Time's Arrow)) Page 3
